Response to “Better Apart: SLU Should Sever Its Ties to Rex Sinquefield”
This letter is in response to a few vocal faculty members that have been providing a perspective that does not reflect the large majority of the faculty here at Saint Louis University.
On Oct. 17th, the student newspaper published a letter from one faculty member suggesting that the Board of Trustees of Saint Louis University needed to fire one of the long-standing trustees, Mr. Rex Sinquefield. We strongly disagree with this view. The post suggested that the support that Mr. Sinquefield provides to politicians must be influential to their work, and thus, the generous gift he provided the University to grow our research eminence must have also been gifted with the guarantee of influence, yet this time over research topics and results.
As faculty members, we were disturbed with the thought that any one of us could be so easily co-opted to ignore the training and commitment to the pursuit of truth on which we have built careers. The notion that faculty are conducting research and teaching outside of our understood ethics; that we faculty are as politicians, responding to the whims of constituents and funding, is insulting and flat out wrong. The article suggested that we circumvent this process in the face of funding. The scientific process persists in the way in which these funds have been administered. It is clear to us that this specific gift provides opportunities for a competitive process to promote critical thinking training, advance basic and social sciences, as well as for the advancement of our humanities, using the past to inform the future.
Students and the university community as a whole need to know that this previous accusation does not represent the views of a majority of faculty and their opinion does not come from our elected faculty assemblies.
We stand together in gratitude for the generous gifts of the past, of today, and the future.
- Enbal Shacham, Ph.D.
Professor, College for Public Health and Social Justice
- Vasit Sagan, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, College of Arts and Sciences
- Ness Sandoval, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, College of Arts and Sciences
- Scott Martin, Ph.D.
Professor and Chair of Chemistry
- James Edwards
Associate Professor, Dept of Chemistry
- Dana Baum, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Dept of Chemistry
- Steven E. Rigdon
Professor, Dept of Epidemiology and Biostatistics
- Leslie Hinyard, Ph.D., MSW
Associate Professor, Saint Louis University Center for Health Outcomes Research
(SLUCOR)
- Steven Buckner, Ph.D.
Professor of Chemistry
- Istvan Z. Kiss, Ph. D.
Professor of Chemistry
- Takako Nomi, Ph.D
Associate professor, School of Education
- Pamela K. Xaverius, PhD, MBA
Associate Professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, College for Public Health and Social Justice
- Christy Bagwill, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Chemistry
- Jeffrey Scherrer, PhD
Professor, Research Division Director, Department of Family and Community Medicine
- Enrico Di Cera, MD
Professor and Chair, Dept of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
- Bruce Kowert, PhD
Professor of Chemistry
- Susana Gonzalo-Hervas, PhD
Associate Professor Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
- Maureen J. Donlin, Ph.D.
Research Professor Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
- David A. Ford, Ph.D.
Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
- Amanda Cox, Ph.D., P.E.
Associate Professor, School of Engineering
- Jack Fishman, Ph.D.
Professor of Meteorology, Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences
Director, Center for Environmental Sciences
- Chuck Graves, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Meteorology, Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences
- Brian P. Downes, Ph.D.
Professor and Associate Chair of Biology
- Dr. Whitney A. Postman, Ph.D./CCC-SLP
Assistant Professor, Director of the Neuro-Rehabilitation of Language Laboratory, Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Doisy College of Health Sciences
- Uthayashanker Ezekiel, PhD
Associate Professor, Clinical Health Sciences, Doisy College of Health Sciences
- Charles C. KIrkpatrick, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Chemistry
- Kyle S. McCommis, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
- Jeffrey Teckman, MD
Professor of Pediatrics
- Christopher K. Arnatt, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Chemistry
- John E. Tavis, Ph.D.
Professor of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology
- John C. Kennell, Ph.D.
Professor and Chair of Biology
- Brent M. Znosko, Ph.D.
Professor of Chemistry
- Terrance M. Egan, Ph.D.
Professor, Pharmacology and Physiology
- Marvin J. Meyers, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Chemistry
- Ryan D. McCulla, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Chemistry
- J. Gary Bledsoe, Ph.D.
Professor and Director, School of Engineering
- Michael A. Swartwout, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, School of Engineering
- Michael Elliott, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics
- Natasha Case, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, School of Engineering
- Scott A. Sell, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Biomedical Engineering Program Coordinator
- Erin Chambers, Ph.D.
Professor and Associate Chair, Department of Computer Science
- Roobik Gharabagi, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering
- Miriam A. Cherry, J.D.
Professor, School of Law
- Ann Scarlett, J.D.
Professor, School of Law
- Erika Cohn, J.D., M.L.S.
Associate Professor and Director of the Law Library, School of Law
- Doug Williams, J.D., M.A.
Professor of Law, Co-Leader Operational Excellence Program
- Chris Rollins, J.D.
Professor and Director of Legal Writing, School of Law
- Mark McQuilling, Ph.D.
Professor and Mechanical Engineering Program Coordinator, School of Engineering
49 William Wold, Ph.D.
Professor and Chairman, Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology
- Sarah George, M.D.
Associate Professor, Division of Infectious Diseases, Allergy, and Immunology, Department of Internal Medicine.
- Duane Grandgenett, Ph.D.
Professor of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology
- Paul A. Jelliss, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Chemistry
- Richard Colignon
Professor and Chair of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology
- Adriana Montano, PhD
Associate Professor, Department of Pediatrics & Department of Biochemistry and
Molecular Biology
- Anders Walker, JD/PhD
Lillie Myers Professor, School of Law
- Daniela Salvemini, Ph.D.
Professor and Interim Chair, Department of Pharmacology and Physiology
- Benjamin de Foy, Ph.D.
Banpu Chair, Professor of Atmospheric Science, Department of Earth & Atmospheric Sciences
- Hailong Qian, Ph.D.
Associate Professor and Chair, Department of Economics
- Fenglian Xu, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Department of Biology
- Sarah L. Coffin, PhD, AICP
Associate professor, Urban Planning and Development
- Zaitao Pan, PhD
Professor, Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, CAS
- David Crossley, PhD
Professor of Geophysics, Department of EAS
- Robert Herrmann, PhD
Professor of Geophysics. Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences,CAS
- Wm. Shawn Steadman, CEM, MArch
Director of Emergency Management, School for Professional Studies
- Wenyan Xiao
Professor of Biology
66.Michael Korybut
Professor, School of Law
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David Rapach • Nov 8, 2019 at 2:21 pm
A group of SLU faculty members wrote a November 7 letter in response to my October 17 op-ed in The University News. The letter fails to address the fundamental issues that I raised in the op-ed.
The letter says nothing about the flagrant violations of well-established academic norms in the Sinquefield donation. To reiterate, at Rex Sinquefield’s request, SLU hired Sinquefield’s ally Mike Podgursky to direct the Sinquefield Center for Applied Economic Research at SLU. In addition, the Sinquefield Center for Research, Inc. must provide final approval for the use of all funds from the Sinquefield donation, including approval for the funding of individual research projects and faculty hiring; indeed, as stated by the previous Interim Provost, “The donors will provide final approval for requests to the Sinquefield fund.” Financial donor influence in hiring decisions and approval for individual research projects, as embodied in the Sinquefield donation, constitute clear violations of well-established academic norms that are designed to protect the independence and integrity of academic research. (Podgursky’s qualifications and the existence of university committees to review research proposals do not somehow negate the violations of academic norms in the donation.) The signatories of the letter apparently are either unaware of such academic norms or consider them inappropriate. In either case, we should be worried that some SLU faculty do not support well-established academic norms that guard against inappropriate financial donor influence.
The letter is also silent about Rex Sinquefield’s well-known ethical breaches in local government. Do the signatories approve of Sinquefield’s ethical breaches in local government? According to the signatories, what ethical standards should SLU use when naming board members and accepting donations? Do the signatories consider it appropriate that some universities accepted donations from, for example, the Sackler family?
The letter says that it is a “response to a few vocal faculty members” and that the “previous accusation does not represent the views of a majority of faculty and their opinion does not come from our elected assemblies.” I wrote the op-ed to present my arguments, and I never claimed to represent the views of any other faculty member and/or any elected assembly. In fact, it is inappropriate for the letter to make a statement about the “views of a majority of faculty,” as it is signed by only a small percentage of SLU faculty. Furthermore, the letter fails to report that on September 18, 2018 the SLU Faculty Senate passed a motion saying that “donors should not participate in employment matters of the University, nor should they play a role in determining the curriculum or in the direction of funding to particular students, faculty, or individual research projects.” An elected faculty body is thus on record as saying that SLU should abide by well-established academic norms regarding financial donations. The Sinquefield donation obviously violates such norms. Do the signatories of the letter support the language in the motion passed by the Faculty Senate?
Finally, we need to ask whether any signatories have received funding from the Sinquefield donation. If any signatories have received funding from the donation, then they should disclose this information, so that SLU stakeholders can be appropriately informed when reading the letter.
The signatories of the letter appear willing to ignore Sinquefield’s ethical breaches in local government and the flagrant violations of academic norms in the Sinquefield donation in exchange for Sinquefield’s money. My argument is that such a Faustian bargain compromises the institutional integrity of SLU and is emblematic of the worst aspects of our society. SLU can—indeed, it must—do better in setting an example for its students and the community.
David E. Rapach
Visiting Professor of Finance, Washington University in St. Louis
Professor of Economics, John Simon Endowed Chair in Economics, Saint Louis University
Email: [email protected]
Webpage: https://sites.google.com/slu.edu/daverapach